Twenty-one years ago, he traded his cubicle at the EPA for a skiff in the frigid Antarctic. He put down his pen and took up a hand clicker and as the saying goes, the rest is history.

Well, not really. Naveen and his team have toiled in obscurity, knee deep in weather that makes the latest Boston Nor’easter look like a sunny day. But their results have been revealed to scientists studying planet warming, thanks to meticulously recorded observations of various tuxedo-looking birds breeding and foraging on the seventh continent.

I spoke to the 69-year-old Washington, D.C., resident who can now add movie star to his resume. He’s the subject of a documentary by Harriet and Peter Getzels, “The Penguin Counters,” which made a splash at the Santa Barbara Film Festival on Feb. 1 and may soon waddle to a film festival near you.

How does it feel to watch yourself in a movie?

Naveen: To actually see yourself up on a screen for well over an hour is quite humbling, actually.

People see penguins as cute creatures. Will they take away anything else from the film?

N: Certainly penguins are cute, marquee animals that everyone loves. But in this part of the Antarctic, two of the three species (Adelie and chinstrap penguins) are not doing well, so there is a chance to talk about the science. The penguins are sending us messages we shouldn’t ignore. They have the same necessities of life as humans, or butterflies or lizards: finding food, passing along their genes.

What does the movie and your research tell us about the environment?

N: They depend on krill, a protein-rich food. But krill is changing and two species’ numbers are declining because they are very krill-focused; they can’t readily switch to fish. So there are messages about adaptation which apply to the human world as well. Like, if there are floods, am I going to find food? Am I going to adapt if climate change comes our way?

What do you say to those who think climate change is not caused by humans?

N: I have a long history of talking to people on both sides of this issue. I am not going to try to tell people what they should think. I want them to come to their own conclusions.

What were the most challenging aspects of the film shoot?

N: We had absolutely horrific, horrible, disgusting, dirty weather. We were on Deception Island and were trying to count all the chinstrap penguins at their peak of egg laying. There were 79,000 nests in the whole island. There was a lot of turning back because you couldn’t see in front of you.

Did you finish the count?

N: Yeah, one way or another. We surveyed every chinstrap colony on the whole island. We had to sail right into a volcano. That was pretty crazy. But we held onto our clickers in our hands, as you can see in the movie.

What did the penguins teach you?

N: I learned their lives are amazingly difficult. They live in freezing air and water all the time. They go up to 150 miles to find food and then they rush back to feed their kids. So I admire them. They have evolved very nicely!

Will you be going back?

N: Of course. I am just starting the wheels spinning for next season. Yeah, I’m going back.

Why not retire?

N: I need penguins in my life. I dream about them. They are constantly prancing into my subconscious. They really do teach us about life on the planet, how complicated it is. They raise questions about adaptation. We humans should pay attention.

Steve Scauzillo covers transportation and the environment for the Los Angeles News Group. Follow him on Twitter @stevscaz or email him at steve.scauzillo@langnews.com. “The Penguin Counters” will be shown March 17-29 at the Environmental Film Festival in Washington, D.C.

Steve Scauzillo covers environment and transportation for the Southern California News Group. He has won two journalist of the year awards from the Angeles Chapter of the Sierra Club and is a recipient of the Aldo Leopold Award for Distinguished Editorial Writing on environmental issues. Steve studied biology/chemistry when attending East Meadow High School and Nassau College in New York (he actually loved botany!) and then majored in social ecology at UCI until switching to journalism. He also earned a master's degree in media from Cal State Fullerton. He has been an adjunct professor since 2005. Steve likes to take the train, subway and bicycle – sometimes all three – to assignments and the newsroom. He is married to Karen E. Klein, a former journalist with Los Angeles Daily News, L.A. Times, Bloomberg and the San Fernando Valley Business Journal and now vice president of content management for a bank. They have two grown sons, Andy and Matthew. They live in Pasadena. Steve recently watched all of “Star Trek” the remastered original season one on Amazon, so he has an inner nerd.